


You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

by voksen



Category: Baldur's Gate
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2009-12-21
Updated: 2009-12-21
Packaged: 2017-10-04 22:26:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,331
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/34758
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/voksen/pseuds/voksen
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Solaufein of Ust Natha has second thoughts.</p>
            </blockquote>





	You Must Gather Your Party Before Venturing Forth

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Salome](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Salome/gifts).



The harsh shrill of Ust Natha's alarm cut through the eastern caverns, shattering the silence and bringing Solaufein to his feet on unthinking reflex, weapon in hand. When no war party appeared before him and nothing else disturbed the small cave he'd made camp in, he relaxed slightly, re-sheathing his blade. _It must be Veldrin, then,_ he thought, and found with some surprise that he hoped she had made good on his plan, then escaped the city, before the alarm rang and the gates were closed - and not only for his own sake, but for hers as well.

It had been a long, long time since he'd had _hope_ for anything that a female did, and it sat oddly in him, though perhaps no more oddly than her mercy of the night before might weigh on her. Leaning back against the cool rock wall, he closed his eyes. He wasn't often given to doubt, but now he wondered whether he had made the right decision in leaving Ust Natha so quickly. Surely no normal drow would have spared his life; the reason must have been compelling. It was possible that Veldrin herself was a follower of Elistraee - perhaps even her whole party - possible that she knew where he might find others like himself.

But second-guessing was pointless; what was done was done, and in any event it had become too dangerous to hide any longer in the shadows of the city. Far better for him to have missed an opportunity to find more worshippers of the Lady than to have lingered too long and be caught and tortured for the betrayal of House Despana.

Still... Perhaps in time he would stop wondering what might have been, though the current situation was vastly different than anything else he had ever known. In any event, with the city on alert, it would be better to move on. They'd search the city first, he knew, but then - if the game had played out as he thought it must have, with the demon lord loose in the city and at least two priestesses dead - it was likely enough that they would continue the search outside the walls.

Solaufein was packing up his camp - bedroll, what little food he had with him, a slightly-tattered piwafwi stolen from a guard's corpse as he left the city, and not much more - when he heard the echo of a voice from the tunnels outside his cave. Distant, still, but coming closer and clearer by the second.

"...and so, as my aunt Melin used to say in situations just like these, turnips of a leaf ought to stick together. But what she meant by that, you know, was --"

A rather oddly squeaky voice, no doubt, but speaking in perfect Drow... however little sense the words themselves made. Drawing the piwafwi about himself for concealment, Solaufein slipped closer to the mouth of his cave.

"We know, Jan," another, lighter voice cut in, one he recognized. So Veldrin had escaped after all, and was headed back, perhaps, to Ched Nasad. Good. (But what sort of name was _Jan?_) "You're not exactly, ah... turnips of a leaf, though, are you?" She laughed, and that as much as anything else convinced him that there must be more to her story worth discovering, whether she was another of Elistraee's worshippers or something else: there was no cruelty in the sound, just... something like friendship, like understanding. "No, quiet, we'll go anyway."

They passed in front of Solaufein's hidden eyes, all six of them alive and looking not much worse off than the last time he'd seen them, in front of the Temple of Lolth.

"This is a fool's errand," said the other wizard as they went by, disrespect dripping from his words; then lower, almost too soft for Solaufein to hear him, "But of course you would know that, being a fool yourself." No doubt Veldrin could hear him as well, but she did nothing, said nothing. The wizard raised his voice again. "I say that if those eggs hatch while we're taking this _lovely_ stroll through the Underdark, _he_ has to explain to the dragon what was so important. _Alone._"

So they meant to return the eggs to the silver - no, more than that, the dragon _expected_ them to. The implications of that were... Solaufein shook his head, picking up his pack and stepping silently out of the cave before Veldrin's party could get too far away. He would watch them for a little longer, see what 'errand' it was that led Veldrin to keep a dragon waiting at the request of a male, and then - then, he would speak to her again, if only to make sure that his plan had worked flawlessly.

 

He was not immediately sure what Veldrin intended from the direction they took, what could be important enough to delay a dragon's wishes; some kind of rare spell component, maybe, or even perhaps a treasure from the eye tyrants' lair. They stopped not too much further into the caverns, however, at the great soul gem occasionally shared by Ust Natha's necromancers.

"You're sure about this?" Veldrin asked, staring up at the gem's varied, sparkling facets. "Remember what happened last time..."

"Well, we've looked just about everywhere else, haven't we? And you can be sure that the last place you look will be the place you find what you're looking for. Why, I remember, one time Ma Jansen--"

Veldrin's priestess nearly knocked him over in a desperate lunge for a facet, turning it so viciously that Solaufein heard the shrieking rasp of gemstone on gemstone as clearly from his position across the cavern as if he had been standing with them. The floor shuddered with released power, pebbles chattering across the rock, and mist flowed forth from the gem, swirling dramatically until it coalesced into the rather unimposing figure of a human male.

Solaufein had expected a fight; those trapped in that particular gem never went willingly, and a surfacer would have no reason to believe anything but that the drow had come back to finish him off.

But Veldrin spoke to him, quiet and calm, and they seemed to come to an agreement; edging closer to better hear the conversation, Solaufein heard him warn her - _warn_ her, a drow - about the dangers of the Underdark, of the kuo-toa and of Ust Natha itself.

When the human had disappeared through a curving tunnel, leaving only the slowly-fading heat signature of his footprints behind, Veldrin turned back to the gem, reaching out more slowly than her comrade had to stroke the next facet.

This time, Solaufein was prepared for the rumble that shot through the earth; he crouched low behind a stalagmite, bracing himself and making no sound to betray his presence. What he was _not_ prepared for was the happy exclamation that burst forth from the shorter mage at the appearance of a young deep gnome. Surely so weak a foe had little value...

Even more puzzling was the look of obvious confusion on the svirfneblin's face. Clearly, he had no more insight to his liberator's odd actions than Solaufein did.

"Bedlen Dagglefod?" the squeaky mage asked eagerly, cutting off the beginnings of a plea for mercy. Slowly, dazedly, the gnome nodded, though the words meant little to Solaufein. A name, perhaps?

"Your father is worried about you," Veldrin said. "You should be getting home."

"M...my father?"

"He's as addled as the first," the other wizard muttered, then, even quieter, "Though perhaps it's his natural state. He'd fit right in."

The svirfneblin certainly _looked_ addled, though Solaufein noticed that he was slowly backing away as his eyes darted from face to face: preparing to run, no doubt. That they had made no move to kill him - that Veldrin, by all evidence, didn't intend to do so - was truly strange. Why rescue one gnome when they'd effortlessly killed an entire patrol on Phaere's orders?

...Unless, he realized suddenly, unless they hadn't killed them at all. If Veldrin had sent him away to the city so that they could let the gnomes go, she would have tricked him easily, angry as he was at Phaere, disgusted by such an easy order...

Scraping and bowing, obviously still a little disbelieving of his good fortune, Bedlen Dagglefod turned and ran, as fast as his stumpy legs could carry him, and Solaufein shook off his own surprise, stepping forth into the main cavern.

"Veldrin," he said, holding his ground as they turned to face him, hands on weapon hilts and spell components. "It is... good to see you again, though I had not truly expected to. Were you able to switch the eggs?"

Veldrin's smile was another reassurance that he was quite right in at least one of his judgements: this was no normal drow. "We were," she said, and then, "Phaere..."

"Was killed by the demon," the priestess filled in bluntly, "and Matron Ardulace as well."

Solaufein didn't miss the glance that went between them, nor the fact that Veldrin let the other's words stand. He might have told himself, back in Ust Natha, that Veldrin's business didn't interest him at all, but that was becoming less and less true - if it had ever been true at all. "Good. Ust Natha is well rid of them."

"As are you, male," the priestess told him.

He couldn't argue with that; Phaere had been dead to him for the last year, ever since she'd come out of the temple, away from the tentacle rods and the driders, and Ardulace had never been anything to him but a plague.

Veldrin was still watching him. "Solaufein..." she said, "what are you going to do?"

Her voice was gentler than it had been when she'd spoken to him in his room in the fighter's society, though the question was the same - as was the answer. "My plans have not changed since we last spoke."

"Come with us," she suggested, simple, plain, but it felt like he'd been waiting to hear those words his entire life.

Behind her, the tallest of her males smiled widely. "Another elf to join us, eh? Boo says justice is done here!" He pulled a rat from within his armor and held it to his ear, stroking it. "Though, yes, he isn't as pretty as the last, Boo. Minsc agrees. Still, the ladies might like his face, too - a little."

Holding up a hand, Veldrin silenced the rest of the comments and turned back to Solaufein. "We're going to the surface," she said, pulling his attention to her instantly, despite the oddity of the rat-holding warrior and the wizard glaring at his back. To stand on the surface, under Elistraee's moon... "But - before you agree, I have to tell you: my name isn't Veldrin."

It was not precisely the confession that Solaufein had been expecting. "It's... not?"

"No, it's Leila. I'm a human - this is an illusion made by Adalon, to help us retrieve her eggs. I'm sorry we had to deceive you."

He barely heard the last half of what she had said - a human, a surfacer? It made a sick sort of sense: the way most of them had never spoken while in the city, probably afraid to reveal how little they knew of drow culture, the _strangeness_ of the fighter, the disrespect of the mages... "A human," he repeated.

So much for his rising hopes about the goodness of other drow. Though for a surfacer to have mercy on a drow, on him, so many times over... Veldrin - no, Leila - must be unusual among her kind, as well.

She reached out a hand to him: empty, and from what he had seen she was no magic-user, but he could see no purpose in it. "Come with us," she said again. "There are other drow who walk the surface, others who worship your Goddess. We're hunting a mage who came through Ust Natha, but we can at least see you safe in the right direction, if that's what you want."

Solaufein had seen surfacers before - with Ust Natha so close to the surface, slaves of the surface races weren't terribly rare, dragons in the passageways or not - but never had he seen such a motley collection as stood beside him in front of the great silver dragon, their illusionary selves newly shed. Four humans, a creature not unlike a svirfneblin, but lighter-skinned, and - a drow, the priestess. From the sideways glare she shot him as Adalon spoke with Leila, he didn't think that there had been any sort of mistake with the dispelling.

And the humans... they varied so widely it was hardly believable that they were all alike, though from all he knew of the surface races, they must be. Only their armor and their general forms remained to mark them as those he'd met; the one with the rat was even taller than he had been, pale skin obvious in the cool, shimmering light of Adalon's lair, covered with oddly colored circles and marks, the red-robed mage, bearded and sharp-featured; and then the two women - one pink-haired, slim, and silent, and Leila: darker and shorter than the other humans, her brown, tight-curled hair held back away from her face by a leather thong.

Different as they were, somehow their new bodies fit them better than the drow ones had; seemed right, though he had not known the others were wrong.

Adalon's spell lifted them, not to the surface as he had expected from her words, but to the edge of the kuo-toa's realm; she left them there, after a brief, muddled battle with a few straggling kuo-toa and a party of drow guarding a narrow passageway - a passage to the surface, he had no doubt. So close to the reality of it, he found himself almost uncertain. Surely Elistraee would see his heart and welcome him, but the same, he was sure, would not be true for the surfacers.

They rested there, despite Leila's obvious desire to continue pursuing the man she'd spoken of; the pink-haired girl was obviously tired, and the wizards were asking - more and less politely - for time to stop and read over their spellbooks. Leila sat watch with him, their backs to the firelight (impractical, but necessary for reading), the both of them staring down the tunnel to the surface.

"I have heard there is a temple to Elistraee in Waterdeep," Leila said quietly after a long silence. "Some ways north along the Sword Coast. We can find a map for you, once we reach a city - or if you'd rather wait until after I find news of Irenicus, I can help you find armor and weapons that will last in the sunlight, too."

Solaufein glanced sideways at her briefly before returning his eyes to the darkened passageway ahead. "Why such generosity, Leila?" he asked. "I know little of surfacers, but I hardly believe it's common."

They sat in silence for a moment, before she shrugged and spoke. "I've seen how hard it's been on Viconia, going it alone, in a world that dislikes her on sight," she said, shifting her seat on the stone with a slight scraping of armor. "I wouldn't wish it on _anyone_ else - and I owe you more than that, for your help in the city, knowing or not."

Another silence, as he tried to piece that together with what he already knew of her. "One thing I wonder about," he said. "Why did you come to Ust Natha - why did you come to the Underdark? Chasing this Irenicus, but why?" He looked over to her again in time to see her lips tighten; even on the coarser, blurred, non-elven features of her face, the expression was clear.

"He's... taken something very important to me," Leila said, "and more than once... and more than me." Glancing over, she caught his eyes; he'd never seen her look so focused, even when she'd worn a drowish form. "He took my sister... forced someone I trusted to betray me when I went to follow him, and dragged our souls from us."

He was no necromancer to understand the details of how such a thing was possible, to be soulless and alive, but - no wonder, he thought, no wonder she had agreed to help the gnome set the young svirfneblin's soul free of the gem, despite the risk of angering the dragon.

"If we don't stop him..." Her voice faltered, stopped, then returned, stronger: "But I will. Solaufein, listen... back in Ust Natha, when I gave Phaere your piwafwi, she-"

"Phaere is dead," he said, acutely conscious of the weight of her gaze. "Leila, I'm sorry - but let her stay that way."

A heartbeat or two in which he began to wonder whether he had not overstepped himself, despite everything, and then - "All right," she said, and reached over to touch his shoulder lightly, no demands that he could identify implicit in the gesture. "I'm sorry. I won't speak of it."

The rest of their watch passed in silence, though - to Solaufein, at least - it was... almost companionable, the only awkwardness coming from her obvious, restless desire to be gone from the Underdark. When it was over, he slept, though lightly; Leila he trusted, the others perhaps less.

When Solaufein awoke, refreshed with the prospect of walking beneath the moon in front of him and the promise of companions who shared his beliefs somewhere in the distance, Leila was already awake, readying a quick, cold breakfast as Viconia and Edwin peered at the fallen corpse of a kuo-toa some distance away. He joined her silently, though the food she was preparing was not quite of any style he'd seen. There were other, simple things he could do as well, to make it less obvious to any passing eyes that their camp had been something other than a drow watchpost.

"Leila," he said finally, noticing a few of the others beginning to stir in their bedrolls, "What will you do after Irenicus is dead?"

She handed him a piece of dry flatbread rolled about a piece of lizard meat; he ate quickly, the sooner to have his hands free again.

"If I'm still alive?" she asked with a wry smile, eating her own breakfast quite a bit more slowly. "I don't know. The last time I was home, it seemed clear it had grown rather too small for me to stay there long. Still, no doubt there's somewhere..."

Solaufein cleared the last ashes of the night's small fire, then brushed soot from his hands. "So you'll travel?" he asked.

Leila nodded, swallowing the last bite of her breakfast. "Most likely," she said, "though I'm not sure about the others... I've led them into more trouble than I care to think about."

Across the cave, the sudden sound of a slap - and a strongly-accented complaint - echoed back to them. Minsc sat up with a start, his blanket flying off and landing atop the two still sleeping beside him. "To battle, Boo!" he shouted, his eyes still half-closed - and if the others hadn't been awake before, they certainly were after that.

The resulting chaos took a few minutes to sort out, and it wasn't until everyone was nearly ready to start out that Solaufein got a chance to speak to Leila again. "Perhaps," he said, "when you travel, you will go north...?"

She looked up at him from where she knelt, fixing one last detail of her armor, and blinked. "Maybe."

Solaufein smiled, and oh, it had been a long time since he'd had cause for a smile with no bitterness in it. "North... to Waterdeep?"

Comprehension dawned in her eyes, and her returning smile looked more genuine than he'd seen since the days when Phaere had loved him. "I've always wanted to see the Heartlands," she said, standing, and offered him her hand again.

On an impulse he didn't entirely understand, he clasped it briefly with his own.


End file.
